With the advancement in wireless technologies, and the increasing diversity of entertainment systems, for example within a home environment, entertainment control networks have been developed, such as the RF (Radio Frequency) Entertainment Control Platform developed by Freescale™ Semiconductor, Inc, based on the IEEE 802.15.4 global standard for low-rate wireless personal area networks (PANs).
Typically, entertainment control networks comprise short range RF networks such as a PAN, comprising at least one controller node, for example in a form of a hand-held remote controller device, and one or more controlled entertainment devices, such as television sets, digital versatile disk (DVD) players, music systems, etc. The controller node acts as a central communication node, to and from which information and control messages may be sent, and through which messages between controlled entertainment devices may be routed.
A problem with current known implementations of entertainment control networks is that there is a requirement for the controller node to provide routing functionality between controlled devices and this requirement results in the complexity of the controller node increasing significantly beyond that of more traditional remote controller devices. Accordingly, greater processing capabilities, and/or additional processing logic is/are required, significantly increasing the cost of such a device.
A further problem with the requirement for the controller node to provide routing functionality between controlled devices is that this additional functionality results in increased power consumption of the controller node. As will be appreciated, in a case where the controller node is in the form of a hand-held remote controller device, the controller node may be battery powered. Accordingly, such an increase in power consumption is undesirable, since it will necessarily result in reduced battery life, or an increase in the battery capacity resulting in an increase in a size and/or weight of the device.
A still further problem with the requirement for the controller node to provide routing functionality between controlled devices is that, where a large number of controlled devices are attempting to communicate with one another, there is a need for such communication to be routed via the controller node necessarily, which results in a bottle-neck at the controller node. As a result, communication between controlled devices should be limited, in order to optimise available communication bandwidth, which in turn would limit the functionality and flexibility that may be provided to the entertainment devices. Furthermore, when a number of controlled devices attempt to communicate with one another, the need for such communications to be routed via the controller will typically result in a delay in such communications.
A still further problem with known entertainment control networks is that it is often the case a controller node is required to be paired with a plurality of controlled devices. Accordingly, when a new controller node is introduced into the entertainment control network, for example when a user wishes to migrate from a low-end remote control device to a more feature rich remote control device, the new controller node is required to perform the pairing operation with all controlled devices within the entertainment control network. In the case where there are a large number of controlled device, this can be a time consuming and tedious task for the user.